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“1% of the world has 90% of the wealth
And the system says to step on folk

why helping yourself
I hope you’re hearing these thoughts
with amazement
And inequity is consigned to the
history pages
I don’t want to see another lost generation”
-Stanley Odd, Son I Voted Yes

I was always going to vote Yes. Ever since my Scottish wife explained the situation of Scotland within the UK to me some twenty years ago, I’ve supported the principle of Scottish independence. And when we moved to Scotland from the USA in 1996, I saw the practical realities of the “United Kingdom” and realised independence was less of a pipedream and more a matter of necessity.

Now, I fully recognise the faults of the country I was born in. The United States is dominated by a powerful, distant elite that maintains its power through a system of reckless, brutal violence. The wealth which is created socially is held in very few hands, and those hands have been extremely successful in using that wealth to construct a world that suffocates alternatives.

However, while the political system has always served the interests of the powerful, at least it can be understood and that’s because there is a written Constitution. And if it can be understood, it can be changed.

In the UK, on the other hand, there is an “unwritten Constitution” – basically all the laws that have accumulated over time. Apparently, once upon a time, British legal scholars found the USA”s constitution a joke – “they need to write it down, they can’t remember it!” But any “unwritten” agreement suffers from the problem that you will inevitably end up making it up as you go along and that is the strikingly odd thing about how Britain “works”.

The Scotland I came to in 1996 seemed like a bleak, beaten down place. Fashions seemed subdued, and while people were more openly progressive in their views than most Americans I had ever encountered, no one seemed particularly hopeful.

One of the strangest experiences I had as a new immigrant was hearing the Prime Minister of the time, John Major, making a statement on the tv imploring the population to spend money on stuff they didn’t necessarily need, in order to create a “feelgood factor.” And then I learned that some people were making £1 an hour in Glasgow, because there was no minimum wage.

I could see the logic in Scottish independence – the way the Westminster government was set up served the interests of the people who owned it, while most people in Scotland expressed progressive political views and voted that way.

So, like I say, if the opportunity had ever come up to vote for Scottish independence, I would have done it.

I didn’t become a UK citizen until 2005, so I wasn’t able to vote for the Scottish Parliament in 1997 but I was pleasantly surprised when a majority not only voted for it, but also the tax varying powers on offer.

And while it has been no revolution, the Scottish Parliament has been a improvement and a different set of values to those dominant in neoliberal governments has become established here: free prescriptions, free personal care for the elderly as well as free public transport for over 60s, no tuition fees for higher education. And all limited by the “make it up as you go along” Barnett formula in which “regions” like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive funding from the Westminster kitty.

I was as critical of the SNP governments as I was of the Labour-Liberal Democrat governments before them, though I had to admit that once the SNP got a majority, they were generally competent, which is a rare thing to see in governments. They only tinkered around the edges of neoliberalism, they did not take it head on; but to be fair had they attempted to do so, the “make it up as you go along” system would probably have been there to stop them.

Anyway, even though I would always have voted Yes, I never thought it was a possibility. And I definitely never thought I would come to see it as something exciting and inspiring.

When it was announced two years ago that Scotland would have a referendum I was surprised that the Scottish Government had actually gotten it agreed with Westminster. I figured it would go nowhere, result in a No vote and a period of smugness from elites – “see, we told you no one was interested.”

But gradually, I became aware that something new happening. Groups like the Radical Independence Convention were making articulate arguments for a progressive case for independence, and a multitude of organisers were making this case in working class constituencies that have been ignored by mainstream politics for decades. People were able to bypass the mainstream media and get information from alternative news sources like Bella Caledonia and Newsnet Scotland.

The countering arguments from the anti-independence “Better Together” campaign ran the spectrum of fear mongering and duplicity – you won’t be able to use the pound, you will be a poor country and nothing will work. Instead of focusing on why it is better to stay in the Union, the focus has been on Scotland not being able to survive without help from Westminster, help which most people in the UK are less than enthusiastic about. Austerity, following on from bank bailouts, does not seem like much help in a country with foodbanks. Being told that Trident nuclear missiles can’t leave Faslane military base (which is 40 miles from Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city) because the only other possible base, in Plymouth, England, is near a “densely populated area” does not inspire the feeling that we are “Better Together”.

In 2012, after David Cameron announced the Scottish Parliament would be allowed to hold a referendum, Scottish Labour MP Alistair Darling made a rambling speech in which he warned:

“British music will no longer be our music. British art, dance and drama will no longer be ours. British sporting success will be someone else’s to celebrate.”

This statement sums up the level of thinking that has dominated the Better Together campaign. It speaks for itself.

There have been last minute attempts by elites in London, such as historian Tom Holland who organised the celebrity “Let’s Stay Together” letter (signed by the likes of Mick Jagger and journalist Rod Liddle who has said “The only reason any people remain in Scotland is on account of the extremely cheap alcohol…plus a ready supply of heroin for when the alcohol runs out”). Tom has stated that he “enjoys the tension and the sense of irony of being British” and adds, with no sense of irony, that the role of Scots is to “re-energise and revitalise the UK”, which presumably was what happened when oil was discovered, its value hidden from the people of the UK, and used during the 80s to fund Thatcher’s de-industrialisation, which broke the back of organised labour (as Alan Budd, Thatcher adviser recalled “what was engineered…in Marxist terms was a crisis of capitalism which re-created a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since.”)

While the Better Together campaign continued to push their “Project Fear” (according the Sunday Herald this was what BT was privately referring to itself as) and their “Love Bombs”, something different was happening among Yes supporters. While BT is a top down organisation with little grassroots support, the Yes campaign has energised people who would not normally be involved in politics. Groups like RIC saw the potential for organising amongst previously ignored working class communities, getting people to register to vote who had never voted before. Women for Independence was formed because, in the words of former MSP Carolyn Leckie “there was no other way I could see how my voice, as a woman, would be heard. And I was fed up watching ‘independence’ being debated by men in grey suits, through a very narrow lens of party rhetoric.” And as in the popular rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook became organising and educating tools that were accessible to many people not usually involved in political activism (though it is important to remember that about 40% of Glaswegians do not have regular access to the internet).

A new cultural confidence emerged, much of it disseminated through the internet. The group National Collective brought together artists and creatives to argue the case for Yes. The satirical news programme Dateline Scotland captured not just the superior tone of tv journalists but the ridiculous content. The Twitter account @AngrySalmond, with over 13,000 followers, has popularised the hashtag “SexySocialism”. Lady Alba’s parody of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, in which she outlines her case for voting No (“I want your weapons, I want student fees. I want a country run by Tory MPs, I’m voting no”) has had over 100,000 views. Stanley Odd’s raps have also gone viral and he has outlined the situation of Scotland within the UK and the reasons for a Yes vote more articulately than most politicians on either side of the debate. In his rap “Marriage Counselling“, “Caledonia” argues its case to a dismissive “Britannia”:

“This is hardly blissful matrimony.
I’ve got resources so I shouldn’t have to ask for money.
I support ma self so don’t even mention alimony.
And I don’t need you to fight ma battles for me.
So tell yir mates in Faslane they need a new address
I see the truth with my new clear head.
Ma pal Alex says that you’re blind to the facts
And that it’s time for me to stand and draw a line in the sand
Everybody’s got an opinion and I’m sick of it
I’m getting pulled in all directions with this constant bickering
It’s like a smokescreen I’m struggling to see through
PS. Half of me doesn’t want to leave you”

This is not a vote for “nationalism”. Despite the decades of lies of Scotland being a land of subsidy junkies (a slur used by the press from the Times of London to the tabloid papers), this isn’t even a vote for Scotland to get rich from its North Sea oil reserves (which help cover up the rest of the UK’s massive deficit). This is a vote against austerity, against Trident nuclear missiles and for a fairer society. This is a vote to make use of a massive resource – instead of creating another “lost generation” of young people, instead of the traditional Scottish export of people, we can create a country where they will want to stay. We will need them to, in order to build a better society.

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Obama has his worst job rating ever in California and most of the decline comes from previous supporters. The respected Field Poll shows nearly as many Californians now disapprove of Obama’s performance as approve (43% vs 45%), a sharp drop from his 62% approval at the beginning of his second term.

This reading is the poorest appraisal of the job performance that Obama has received of his presidency and is in sharp contrast to the 62% favorable perception that California voters had of him at the beginning of his second term. Most of the recent decline in the President’s approval ratings has occurred among subgroups of voters who had been among Obama’s strongest supporters in prior polls.

Further, a majority of Californians (51%) now think the country is seriously off track. These results in a previous bastion of support for Obama do not bode well for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Yes, we are living in turbulent times. However Obama lately seems disinterested and asleep at the wheel. Even California Senator Dianne Feinstein is criticizing him, saying he is “too cautious” about ISIS. I’d call it being “comatose.” In times of turmoil and peril, political leaders should attempt to lead or at least pretend they care about what’s happening. Obama instead makes bland comments and does little.

Asked by NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell if Obama’s statement that the U.S. did not yet have a strategy to deal with ISIS projected weakness, Feinstein replied, “I think I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious. Maybe in this instance, too cautious.”

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Our country (for quite good reasons) has vanishing respect for authority.’Authority is respected when authority is respectable’. Our leaders and authorities too often are compromised, venal, sociopaths primarily interested in enriching themselves. Most people now assume government and business lie to them continually, and they are mostly correct.

So, it should be no surprise that authorities and experts are increasingly attacked or ignored, while anyone who can post on social media is assumed to have a equal authority to experts who has studied the subject at hand for twenty years. This is dangerous and leads to idiocies like mothers not vaccinating their children, putting the health of others in the area at risk.

This mindset leads to ideological entrenchments like Obamabots and Tea Party members trading insults and refusing to listen to anyone but themselves. It also leads to stupidities like the “check your privilege” rubbish where anyone born above a poverty level is presumed to be untrustworthy and captive to their class. History shows otherwise. Leaders of revolutions are almost always from wealthy families. Their privilege gave them the time to understand what was wrong with their society. Plus, they had an insider’s view of how it operates. Lenin, Fidel Castro, Che, Mao, Karl Marx all came from prosperous families. The problem isn’t about privilege per se, it’s about what one does with it.

In a society that no longer has trustworthy leaders, people start searching for new answers and solutions. That’s a primary reason for the Tower of Babel that passes for social and political discourse now. This doesn’t mean the American people are dumb, quite the opposite. They know something has gone badly wrong.

Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

But I also worry about the tendency to dismiss the American people as a bunch of idiots. In truth, I find that average Americans are often more aware of what’s wrong with our country than the better educated are, though they are frequently unable to exactly articulate our national problems. But they get, deeply, that something just ain’t right here, and it hardly furthers debate to portray such common people, who unlike our cautious-lipped elites are often willing to state obvious truths fearlessly, as idiots. Which is exactly what both Left and Right do. There has developed a near-universal hunt for false consciousness among one’s political opponents, and it is cancerous.

The doctrinaire Left insists upon doing things and organizing the way it was done 80 years ago. However, the world has changed. The old ways no longer work. Anarchists get this. That’s why Occupy primarily came from and was encouraged by anarchists. They’ve changed with the times. The Marxist Left was just as gobsmacked by Occupy as neoliberals were. They never saw it coming and their usual tactic of trying to jack incipient movements didn’t work. The anarchists wouldn’t allow it.

If you’re so stereotypically ‘leftwing’ that it impedes the achievement of your goals, perhaps you’ve gone wrong.

Why, in more than five years of turmoil for the global capitalist system, has the left made such a practically negligible impact?

A third manifestation is the commitment to sustaining old methods of organising and old organisational divisions, no matter how thoroughly inadequate to today’s situation they are. Whether one is in the Labour party or in a groupuscule of some kind, it should be evident by now that the institutional formats that worked in the 20th century no longer do.

All too often these positions are conveyed as ostentatiously leftist, safeguarded against revisionism and betrayal. But if the result is that little is achieved, such positions are not leftist; they are useless.

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Obama’s approval rating is 43%, with disapproval at 55%, worse than any president since Nixon. Congressional approval is way worse, at an abysmal 16%. However, a genuine budget is about to pass for the first time in years and healthcare.gov appears to finally be functioning as it should. So maybe this is a low point for Obama. Or not.

The economy is still mostly dismal and it looks like housing and real estate is set for another tumble. Obama has been relentlessly bailing out Wall Street but has yet to do much for Main Street.